Monday July 30 2012

Today is our last day here at the ROD park. It is another perfect day and all I was hoping for in Michigan. The park is beautiful and very active. Lots of kids with their parents/grand parents enjoying the camping life. Many are in tents - really camping!

I have started our move by putting water in our holding tank. We leave in the morning and plan to overnight in either a Flying J or Pilot truck stop or at  a camping world or a Walmart. We need to stock up on food before we get into St Clair.

In St Clair we expect our friends Dr. and Jan Nelson to join us on the 5th and even expect Wayne and Brenda Cassada to show up there. A real home coming.

I have better pictures of the entrance to share and also some art work that was done on a concrete block building. The guy that painted the building was good but I never did catch him painting even though he just finished it yesterday. Reminded me of the talent that the sidewalk painter has. Will include one of his drawings in this blog.

Heartland Woods ROD Park

Part of entrance - very nice

Doesn't look like a concrete block building

this is an example of sidewalk art!

Tuesday July 24, 2012

Today marks two months we have been on our trip. It has been a very wonderful experience this far. The weather has been wonderful except for yesterday when it got above 95 and we only have 30 amps here. One air conditioner. We made it with the temp inside hitting 83 while Linda was making supper. We made it through the day and it is now 77 at 10:41. Think we will stay in MI for another 4-5 weeks until it gets cooler to travel on west.

We have really nice neighbors here. One retired military is 85 and fought in the pacific. They have been full-timers for 12 years.

I wanted to replace the "gate" picture of this wonderful park as I really didn't do it justice.

Linda asked management here if we could receive mail here at the park. We need to get our voting done. Can't complain if you don't vote. Our grand daughter will mail us our ballots tomorrow.

Went shopping in Leslie yesterday. It is a small but nice town about 9 miles west of us. We are in the boonies and was happy to find such a good market so close by. Milk is under 2 bucks a gallon!

Guess that is all for today.

fountain at gate

gate entrance

miniature golf

Otis and Linda

Saturday July 21, 2012

WOW!

Michigan is all I thought it would be! It was 55 last night after a really pleasant sunshine filled cool day! It is 72 here at 10 in the morning. We are supposed to get rather warm this weekend.

The Park here is really wonderful. There are not to many class A units here - maybe 12 in the whole park but it is full of fifth wheels and travel trailers. The park setting here is really wonderful. As with most resorts, it is a long ways to anywhere. The trip here was nice as we stayed on the local roads.  A lot of stops but we were in no hurry and the little rain we drove through was welcomed as the crops were nearly dead from the drought. The first night and day here we had lots of rain - again all welcomed as the drought has really been severe here in the mid west. I do think there was enough rain to save the crops - if they get some more rain soon.

We do not have sewage hook up here but do have a little pipe we can use so our grey water is discharged into that. The electric here is 30 amps but seems to be sufficient if we only run one air as we make coffee or use the microwave. We are very happy here and will be here 2 weeks. Price is right as it is free.

So far on our trip we have spent $53.00 for camping and that was for the 50 amps service. 528.99 was spent on food while $582.52 was put into our RV and $68.10 into the car. Our total cost on the trip thus far is $5545.25 and that includes $2200.00 for our Thousand Trails upgrade and $299.00 for lifetime membership in Good Sam. We spent the money on the TT upgrade as we get 3 weeks in a park and can go park to park with no out time. We also added many parks to our system and needed that for our future stay in Florida. We have been on the road for 8 weeks now and have really enjoyed it.

Our site at Heartland Woods Resort

Entrance to Park

A site owned by user - NICE

another really nice site

shows the space in the resort

Dirt roads but well maintained

Sunday July 15, 2012

Been a while since last post. We left NC and the Humming Birds were not happy. We had a feeder outside our living room window and took it down the evening prior to our leaving. When I got up the next morning and was in the kitchen getting ready to eat, the hummingbird came up to the window, and as plain as day, wanted to know where his feeder was. He flew over to the living room window and back to the window I was at and just stayed there, wanting to know where his feeder was. I should have taken it out and he probably would have eaten out of my hand! What a wonderful experience!

We are now in Ohio at our faimily reunion. The attendance was down this year to nearly 100. The weather has been wonderful and everyone has had a wonderful time. Linda and I really got a wonderful surprise on Sat morning. We had gone in to Minerva to get some ice and rolls for dinner and when we came home, our  granddaughter, her husband and our great grandson were there to greet us! What a great day we had! Couldn't have been better.

The gas and oil company have brought real prosperity to this area. They have gone to all the land owners in the area and bought leases to the oil and gas on the property. It is a 10 year lease and if they do drill on your property and they get oil or gas, you get 17% of the income!  Our neighbor across the street got 560,000 dollars. A lot of folks got a real windfall. Praise the Lord. We are real happy for the folks here as it has been real tough on the local economy for a number of years.

I have included some pictures of the things we did here at the reunion. Hope you enjoy them.

Our lot at Forest Lake NC

Band performing at Forest Lake

Hummingbird feeder on our coach

one of our little friends

As the food was being put our at family reunion

Going down the chow line

one of the children's activity

Fishing at the lake at reunion

Under the tent

My oldest brother Mark

This was our great surprise - granddaughter her husband and son

Corn hole competition.

There were many other activities such as hay ride. bon fire, wiener roast, smores,  Friday night pizza and Margaretta. All in all a really great weekend for the nearly 100 in attendance. All is planned for the 2013 reunion. Our grandson in law won second place in the corn hole contest.

If  my brother Dallas had been able to attend it would have been perfect. Love you Dallas

Saturday July 7, 2012

Been awhile. Not much has happened as we are camped at the Thousand Trails park in Advance, NC. It has been really hot with some days as high as 105. Needless to say we don't do much when it is that hot.

The 4th here was a really busy day! We went to a magician show and the guy was really good. Then there was a watermelon eating contest, a seed spitting contest, a hot dog eating contest, a golf cart parade (some carts were really beautiful), a concert, movie and fireworks! The park was really full and all had a great time.

We had 2 trips to WalMart (there is one north of us and one south, both super stores).

All continues to operate good. We did have the storm that left so many folks without power go through here. We had our awning in but our neighbor did not and he spent the next day repairing it. We got a call from our friend Wayne Cassada and he said the storm really had his RV rocking. If you know Wayne you know how he anchors his awning. He said the storm stretched his tie down spring and broke 2 arms. Also, if you know Wayne, he will have it all repaired and better than new when he is done. He said he will never leave his awning out overnight again. As you know, there are still about a million  people without power. It was a really bad storm. We were lucky it went mostly north of us. We do watch for storms all the time.

We are about ready to head on to Ohio for our reunion.

Otis and Linda